TS Eliot the former Faber editor talks about his views on advertising. So it was in 1931 when TS Eliot wrote this memo to his fellow directors. Has the world of advertising changed?
Thomas Stearns Eliot, was a poet, playwright and literary critic who received a Noble Prize in Literature in 1948.
I have for some time been increasingly dissatisfied with our style of advertising, and increasingly doubtful of the system. As my dissatisfaction with the first led to my questioning the second, I will take two in order.
Our advertising seem to hesitate between the methods of the younger house which advertise and those of the older houses which merely publish booklists, for the most part, the in the newspapers. While I should be very sorry to see F. & F. adopt the extreme style of one or two publishers, I still think that it is much too young a firm to adopt such conventional advertisement as we do. Our advertisements seem to have an apologetic tone and lack of confidence in the value of what we have to sell. Mere lists of books impress no one; and commendatory quotations /{in small type} even from the best papers, carry very little weight. I should like to see advertisements which would give the impression that we have at any moment at least one book to advertise, in potential popularity of which we have ourselves entire confidence.
I must make it clear that I do not pretend to possess the slightest ability of advertising, which is a special study for special talents. But I think that the ordinary educated reader’s impression of our advertising may be very similar to my own. I am however sure that whatever schemes of advertising may be preferable, we need a new method of producing them advertisements.
At the present our advertisements seem to be the product of one man – and that is far too few – and in a sense also the product of the whole committee – and that is too many. The committee thinks from hand to mouth; and the subject with which it chiefly deals – what book to include and what to leave out of the week’s advertisements – is really, from the wider point of view of the general programme, a mere detail. This general programme does not exist. What I wish to emphasise is that advertising is a study demanding special capacities; it does not fit in with the other dork of C.W.S. , who already has quite enough to do in his own departments without it; and that it requires a certain continuous study of the situation, and a continuous creative or intensive exercise.
I suggest that a small sub-committee should have full powers; within the sum allotted they should have control, and of course subject to retrospective criticism from the whole book-committee. They should be responsible for the whole programme for each season, including circulars and catalogues.
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A subject which intersects with that of advertisement is that of our volume of production. I think that we tend to publish too many books. This is related to advertising in this way, that we cannot afford more space at present than we do take, and this is almost invariable overcrowded. I do not object to taking risks on those type of books which may be either great successes or great failures; but we seem to have too many books which make little money, and (especially in the present times) will probably lose just a little money. I do not think that the principle of publishing any book which is good of its kind, and which seems likely just to “get home”, is the right one; though I think every publisher ought to publish a few books, if they are very good, on which he knows that he will lose money. And in general, we do not seem to be quick enough in following changes of the market: if we had, we might have saved money dropped on limited editions.
In fine, I feel that the committee system has been a little overdone, in that it tends to relax individual responsibility. In such an atmosphere, and especially in a committee which has to deal rapidly with a great variety of business and of books in an afternoon, any one person may now and then wake up to find that something has been done against which.he would have protested had he been alert. I do not know whether it is possible to give the committee more organic unity by a clearer division of functions between individual members, but just as the man who produced books naturally has a slightly different point of view from the man who has to sell them, so if each member were expected to have devoted more attention to certain aspects of the integral problem of publishing, the result might be less haphazard. It is not enough to publish a good and advertisements for publishing firm is for that firm to develop a distinct character which shall become recognised by the trade and the public.
T.S.E.
9.12.31
The book committee was a weekly meeting where all decisions were made.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TS_Eliot
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Post written by Eve Fairley-Chickwe
